


Clanks, Germs, & Steel

by gisho



Category: Girl Genius
Genre: Fanwork Research & Reference Guides, Meta, Timeline, Worldbuilding, intense geekiness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-08
Updated: 2017-04-06
Packaged: 2018-05-25 11:22:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6193066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gisho/pseuds/gisho
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of meta about the Europa of Girl Genius and the ways Sparks would have influenced history and culture. May contain ficlets. Open spoilers; massively geeky and attempts to back everything up with detailed references, so reader beware.</p><p>1: timeline, arc 1 edition.<br/>2: why aren't things even weirder?<br/>3: (ficlet: then and now.)<br/>4: mapping Mechanicsburg.<br/>Working on: the state of religion. Europan Sexual Revolution. girls and boys and muses go to Jupiter!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Dates and Times, Arc 1 edition

> 'This is the sort of thing that causes Heterodyne scholars to drink heavily whenever nitpicky scientific journals insist on things like "dates" and "authentication".' - Footnote 85, _Agatha H. and the Voice of the Castle_ , Kaja & Phil Foglio

This isn't meta in itself, but an attempt to pin some stuff down: a list of every time a specific date or time period is given in GG that places an event or is otherwise interesting. I'm limiting it to dates and times given in the text itself, not including interviews, questions answered at cons, or the Secret Blueprints. The novels have a lot more specific information, so I'll add dates/times from the comic only if they are not mentioned in the novels. Page refs are to the Night Shade Books hardcover editions.

(I know this has been tried before, but dammit, I'm going to do it with citations.)

#### Timing of the backstory:

  * _Centuries ago_
    * v7p022: "The first Castle Heterodyne was built in 1042 by the H'trok-din's son, Knife. It was destroyed and rebuilt three times before the present structure was erected in 1298." 
    * v13p001: "How long did it take to build the Castle?" "The present version? Ah - about ten years, I think." 
    * n3p66: "For close to a thousand years, the people of Mechanicsburg have served the House of Heterodyne," according to Carson. 
    * n2pv: 'The Heterodynes had been unchecked for centuries'. 
    * n2p345: Sturvin the plumber tells Krosp, "There were a lot of armies biouvacked here [in Balan's Gap] for almost a decade before the Storm King whipped everyone into shape.". 
    * n2piii: The Palace of Enlightenment was built 'over the last eight years'; Andronicus has been living in bad conditions 'for the last three years' as of the treaty/wedding. 
    * n2pvi: The Heterodynes were 'throwing everything they had for over two years against the fortress Andronicus had ordered built here in Balan's Gap'. 
    * n2pvi: Andronicus and Euphrosynia have been corresponding 'in the year since' seeing each other at a parlay meeting. 
    * n2pvii: Andronicus has been avoiding the Muses 'for weeks'. 
    * n2piii: 'Two Hundred And Sixteen Years Ago', Andronicus was about to marry Euphrosynia. 
    * n2p224: "Moxana and Tinka ... traveled across Europa for over a hundred and fifty years ..." 
  * _Recent history, several decades back:_
    * n2p44: "I'm going to marry Bill Heterodyne. He asked me yesterday ... finally." This is just before Lucrezia sent Klaus away; she doesn't dither. Counting back: at least 21 years, 8 months, before the story starts. Assume Lucrezia was 3 months pregnant at the time of the Great Attack, and Agatha had been 18 for 3 months when the story starts, and this increases to 22 years 4 months. 
    * n1p26: 'Klaus had vanished before the wedding' of Bill and Lucrezia. 'He reappeared six years later, when Europa was deep in chaos and ruin with the Heterodynes, as well as most of the other Great Sparks, gone.' 16 years before the story starts. This jives with the 22+ years we get adding ages. 
    * n2p226: Payne "was able to protect them [Tinka and Moxana] for almost twenty years", until "three years ago, we were doing our spring traverse of the mountains, just as we're doing now ... There was still snow on the ground that year ..." They must have joined Payne around the same time Klaus vanished. 
    * v7p072: Klaus Barry's tomb reads 'Born [18?]72.' This is the only date we have; it would place the Act 1 plot in 1892. 
    * n3p438: Lucrezia came to Theo's christening, so he must have been born before the Other attacked. Not necessarily long before. 
    * n3p105: Klaus Barry Heterodyne was "With us but for 407 days", and was born "two years and three months" after Klaus vanished. 
    * n3p106: Carson retired "three days before" the attack. The explosion was "at eight-seventeen p.m.". People ran to obey Carson during the cleanup, 'as they had done for the last thirty years'.
  * _The Great Attack on Castle Heterodyne, 19 years before canon_
    * n3p102: 'The Great Attack took place nineteen years before our current narrative begins'. Directly stated in a footnote. 
    * n2p322: "She could discover how to do this ten ... _twenty_ years from now, and still be the one who destroyed Castle Heterodyne nineteen years ago!" 
    * n3p108: After the attack Bill and Barry returned 'within hours'. They dealt with rescue efforts, then locked themselves in Bill's lab and argued "for almost two days ... they left the next day." 
    * n3p48: "Mechanicsburg airspace has been safe for close to twenty years." Presumably it started being safe when the castle was damaged.
_Shortly following:_
    * n1p49: "... a look that at eighteen, [Agatha] no longer had any patience for." How soon after the attack was she born, and how far into her eighteenth year is she? I headcanon that Lucrezia was 3 months pregnant at the time of the attack (early enough that, say, Carson von Mekhan wouldn't have noticed, but late enough for her to be confident she wouldn't miscarry) and that Agatha was born in January, placing the Great Attack in June. 
    * n1p121: Klaus asks if the hive engine is "eighteen years old or brand new". Why eighteen? The Other was active up to sixteen years ago. 
    * n1p1,2: "Sixteen Years Ago", Bill & Barry watch hive engines land near Woggleburg. "It had been three years since" the attack on Castle Heterodyne. "Six months later the attacks had begun in earnest, and in the subsequent two and a half years, thirty-eight of the most powerful Sparks of Europa had been snuffed out." Sounds like an exact figure. 
    * n1p7: Report to the Baron says Bill & Barry have not been seen since the Woggleburg attack 'sixteen years ago', which, if it is a recent report, confirms the header date. 
    * n1p13: '... the Heterodyne Boys had vanished over fifteen years ago.' Sixteen is over fifteen, so this is probably just rounding-down.
  * _After Bill and Barry vanish:_
    * n3p109: Carson specifically claims the Baron returned after Bill and Barry vanished. 
    * n2p298: Klaus returned "a few years after he dissapeared," Tarvek tells Lucrezia. 
    * n1p98: 'The Baron had begun construction of the giant airship almost sixteen years ago,' about as soon as he came back. 
    * n1p27: 'Nearly fifteen years later' than Klaus founded the Empire, it stretches from Istanbul almost the the Atlantic. Gilgamesh as of now 'had only recently been revealed to the world'. 16 vs 15 is probably 'returned' vs 'started to expand'. 
    * n2p276: Vrin tells Agatha, "We have been here ... through fourteen winters now". The intervening two years must have been the time their city was attacked and Lucrezia built the mysterious device. 
    * n3p36: Wooster thinks the Baron has had people working in Castle Heterodyne for "Almost fourteen years". 
    * n3p36: The Castle "lay broken and abandoned for years" after the Other's attack, Wooster tells Agatha; a TPU team entered and "six months later" one person was sent out for supplies, during which time Klaus had taken over. 
    * n3p116: "It has been four hundred and thirty-seven million, two hundred and fifteen thousand, three hundred and fifty-three seconds since this system was last activated." This works out to 13 years and just over 10 months. I wonder what inspired him to do it then? Something to do with Baron Wulfenbach taking over the town, presumably. (The number is the same in the comic version.)
  * _Barry returns with Agatha:_
    * n1p59: In Agatha's flashback Barry is distressed by her heterodyning: "You're only five years old!" 18 - 5 = 13 years ago; we can assume the Baron had already taken Mechanicsburg by this point. 
    * n2p324: From Beetle's notes: "Barry and Agatha arrived in Beetleburg around twelve years ago. Shortly thereafter he dissapeered." 
    * n3p333: Barry may have stayed in Beetleburg 'as long as a year'. 
    * n1p149: Agatha says "It's been eleven years!" since Barry vanished. 
    * n1p54: 'They [Barry, Agatha, Adam, & Lilith] had all lived together happily for several months'. Barry said he might be gone for 'as long as two months'. His third letter arrived 'over a year later ... while they had been outside the city picking apples'. This suggests a late autumn date; the months Barry lived with them might have been over the summer. 
    * n3p156: '... Beetleburg, where Agatha had been living for the past eleven years ...' Appeoximately; maybe she figures she was just 'visiting' until Barry left. 
    * n1p21: Agatha says Mr. Tock has seen her "every day for eleven years". Allowing for exaggeration, this still implies she's frequently spent time at the University since age seven. Does TPU have a primary school on campus? 
    * n1p11: Beetleburg annexed 'over a decade ago'. Bad timing from Barry's perspective. 
    * n1p28: Klaus annexed Beetleburg 'about ten years ago, after a particularly hard winter'.
  * _A lot of stuff happened approximately three years ago:_
    * n2p30: The expedition found Skifander "a few years ago", posssibly more than three assuming they stayed there a while and it was a long trip back. 
    * n3p99: Tiktoffen tells Zola, "I've been in here for three years". 
    * n2p80: Zeetha says, "I have been wandering Europa for over three years now". 
    * n1p177: "In the subsequent three years" since the destruction of Bangladesh DuPree's fortress, she has worked for the Baron. 
    * n1p180: DuPree asks after the search for whoever destroyed her fortress - "It's been three years." 
    * n2p226: Payne "was able to protect them [Tinka and Moxana] for almost twenty years", until "three years ago, we were doing our spring traverse of the mountains, just as we're doing now ... There was still snow on the ground that year ..." 
    * v11p131: "My contact ... mentioned that, in the last three years, someone's taken out twelve of your Smoke Knights." Violetta's contact appears to be Veilchen, and he's wearing a cast on his arm. 'Three years' suggests both that Violetta was sent to Mechanicsburg then, and that the assasination attempts stepped up after Tarvek clankified Anevka - perhaps because it proved he was a strong spark? 
    * n2p313: Wooster has 'come to know [Gil] over the last three years'. 
  * _Less than three years ago:_
    * n2p31: Zeetha joined the circus "almost two years ago", says Olga. 
    * n3p278: Scorp saw Grantz in Belgrade "last year"; footnote 62 notes records 'do not show the Vespiary Squad active in Belgrade', implying it did exist then. He saw her during 'the incident of the Three Sewer Golems'. 
    * v12p082: "General Ã˜sk died fighting the Polar Lords' doom wyrm last year." 
    * n3p140: 'Ardsley had been Gil's friend for two years, and his valet for six months.' This is as of June, given some reasonable assumptions about how long the plot takes, so he has been working for Gil since about January - this was probably also when Gil was revealed as Klaus's son. 
    * n1p180: DuPree says Klaus has had Gil "caged up here for the last couple of months" - this is as of March/early April. 
    * n2p178: Augie guesses that whatever happened to Passholdt "happened last fall or over the winter". Even if the pass was closed, doesn't Passholdt have any long-distance communication? They must, since Lord Selnikov and the Jotun brothers knew to turn up and clean out the lab. Unless they happened to be visiting when things went wrong. 
  * _And one point of future insight:_ n1p179: When DuPree saw Gil in the hole in the air, he looked "older than he is now. Not a lot older ... " 



_Contradictory and/or unplacable:_

  * n1p241: Klaus says, "I was gone for less than four years, and I came back to a world in ruins" contradicts the 'six years later' given on page 26, unless time travel shenanigans are involved. 
  * n3p252: When Gil came back to Castle Wulfenbach, Sleipnir and Theo "hadn't seen [him] in years". Awfully vauge. Must have been at least three, since Wooster knew him that long. 
  * n3p294: Zola says the Baron's son was revealed "four months ago". This contradicts Wooster having been his valet six months, and would put the reveal in late February. 
  * n3p313: The Council of the Knights of Jove "recently" discovered the multiple Castle entities, probably thanks to Tiktoffen. 
  * v13p001: The Castle has had "the most whacked-out sparks in Europa locked up in there for over fifteen [years]", Moloch says. This contradicts Carson's "fourteen", which is probably more accurate. 
  * n3p295: Zola's original plan called for the Storm King's heir to be discovered "a year or so from now". "Within ten years - sooner if the Wulfenbachs do something foolish -" they'd have the Empire. 
  * v9p020: Zola says, "And within five years ... we'll have the empire." No, they won't. Not even ten. 



_Weirdness on Gil's timeline:_ n2p303: 'Gil looked down from the great height of his twenty-two years and rolled his eyes.'

The timing problems in Gil's backstory have been discussed before. iztarshi (khilari on ao3) has pointed out [the issues placing his friendship with Tarvek](http://iztarshi.tumblr.com/post/64013596084/trying-to-place-boy-detective), and mugglibus (savagescribbles on ao3) [the issues around Klaus's time in Skifander](http://mugglibus.tumblr.com/post/22641706670/timelines-how-do-they-work#notes). I think most of those issues can be eliminated by assuming the '22' given as his age was an error, and that Gil is actually 19 when the plot begins. What has to happen?

  * Gil must be born at least nine months after Klaus vanished (~22 years 4 months ago, see above). If he's 19, this gives Klaus 2-3 years away, into which one could fit plenty of plot. n3p180: Zeetha tells Gil her father "ran off a month after ... ah ... I was born." If we go with the well-supported fanon that Gil and Zeetha are twins, the 'ah' was probably her backpedaling on 'we were born'. This also means Klaus must have taken years on transit - he only came back sixteen years ago, and Zeetha can't plausibly be sixteen even throwing out Gil's 'twenty-two'.
  * Gil has to be in the care of someone other than Klaus by the time he's old enough to remember clearly. This doesn't have to be the school or aboard the Castle - he might have spent time with trusted foster parents on the ground until the Castle was launched and the school started. 
  * The war against Teufel, or his fake backstory would not be plausible. n3p380: The war against the Black Mist Raiders "took over three years". Which three? If the Teufel origin story were true, Gil could have been captured any time after the war _started_ \- maybe Klaus found him in a fortress he captured by surprise/treachery too fast for the defenders to evacuate - so the implication would only be that this happened while he was too young to remember. It makes sense for the war to have been an early success of Klaus's that drove towns to his banner, maybe starting less than a year after his return.
  * Klaus captures Mechanicsburg and hires Von Pinn, ~14 years before the story starts. This must be before Tarvek left the castle; he wouldn't remember Von Pinn so fondly otherwise. This was likely before he came to the Castle. If Gil is now 19, this happened when he was 5. 
  * Tarvek comes to the Castle, befriends Gil, and gets expelled.
  * Gil breaks through and makes a friend. I agree with iztarshi, no reason he'd hide his spark before knowing he was Klaus's son, and the stress makes a very plausible breakthrough trigger. n1p183: "I made him [Zoing] when I was younger." "He was eight." ... "Most of the gifted break through in their teens - or even later." If Gil is 19, this was 11 years ago.
  * Zeetha wins the tournament and travels to Europa. If she's also 19, she was no more than 16 then - young, but plausibly a driven enough fighter to win against everyone.
  * Gil goes to Paris, and immediately meets Zola. This was at least 3 years before the story starts, since Wooster knew him that long.
  * Bangladesh Dupree hires on with Klaus; she spends some time in Paris with Gil, while Tarvek and Zola are also present. She's also commanding an airship and conducting her 'war against the glass celing' - maybe Klaus sent her to Paris right away to prove herself, then gave her the command, and therafter she visited on her own for fun.
  * Gil comes back to the castle and is revealed as the Baron's heir.



So why the stated twenty-two? Well, maybe someone forgot to subtract two-and-a-half years. He could be twenty-two when Act 2 starts; we've seen no suggestion otherwise.

_Things we don't know that I would like to:_

  * How old is Anevka, especially relative to Tarvek? Most fics assume 'noticably older', but the story from when he was four she coud have heard from a relative; the rest is just personalities. For all we know they're twins. 
  * Just how long has Albia been ruling England?
  * When did various towns other than Mechanicsburg come under the Baron's rule? Has the Empire kept expanding steadily?



#### Timing of events in the main plot:

  * _Very recent history_
    * n1p33: Merlot and Glassvitch worked on the Dihoxulator 'for three months', Glassvitch says. They must have started about the same time Gil was revealed as Klaus's heir. 
    * n1p35: " ... two weeks ago we found a fully functional, unhatched Hive Engine ..." 
  * _We know it starts in March:_
    * n1p10: Day of the electric phenomemon, people are 'garbed against the March cold'. 
    * n1p114: Only two of twenty-two tables in the student's common area are occupied, because it's spring planting time. (Page 81 says 'easily two dozen people' were present; 24 * 22/2 = 264 students, at a minimum.)
  * _Day the story starts (Day 1):_
    * n1p19: "the hands [of the Market Square clock] stood at seven", making Agatha late. No indication of whether this is a twenty-four-hour clock. Given that Agatha has been up and working in daylight for a while, and the market is already busy, might it not be set to a local solar time? 
    * n1p56: Omar got dizzy "a little before twelve hundred", collapsed "around fifteen", and passed out "around sundown". They just arrived "this morning". Worth noting is that Moloch uses twenty-four-hour time. 
  * _Day 2:_
    * n1p60: Agatha wakes up 'in the first light of dawn', the day after Beetle's death. 
    * n1p71: 'Five minutes later' a J?ger sticks his head into a room that was C-gassed. p72: "With the C-Gas, we must assume they'll be out for at least thirty-six hours." 
  * _Day 3:_
    * n1p94: Gil asks Agatha, "Did you know that you have been asleep for around thirty-six hours?" 
  * _Later:_
    * n1p181: DuPree says, "I'll be in dock for three days". She is still in dock when the hive engine opens.
  * _Day of the Hive Engine release:_
    * n1p202: "It is very late" when Rovainen kills Vg and activates the Hive Engine. 
    * n2p51: "Sometime between midnight and 2AM ... someone activated the Hive Engine" on Castle Wulfenbach. 
    * n1p211: Rovainen says "No one has seen Dr. Vg since last night." Well, obviously not, he's dead. This does demonstrate the engine needs less than a day from activation to start producing wasps. 
    * n2p56: Gil suspected Agatha was a spark in Beetleburg, but " _knew_ this morning". He is sent off with DuPree immediately, so they must have taken several days to find the circus.
  * _So how long was Agatha aboard?_
    * n1p162: Agatha's headaches go away. "By the third [day] she had actually tried to induce one and failed." She has a good cry that night, then her breakthrough symptoms stop. Counting from dawn when Agatha lost her locket: Day Beetle died, day Agatha was hit by C-gas, day she woke up on the Castle (at lunchtime - this doesn't quite jive with the 'thirty-six hours' she was asleep), first day she worked with Moloch, three days following = seven days to finish breakthrough. An unspecified time then passes before her fight with Moloch and Gil's invitation to work with him. 
    * n1p204: Gil thinks Agatha started building the dingbots "a few nights ago"; there are now hundreds. He says of one of the second-generation dingbots "I watched as this one was built by three others tonight." This agrees with what Krosp said after the first day she worked with Gil, that she'd been building things he chased but couldn't catch. Is this the very next day after she started working with Gil? She gave Rovainen the "Then go and do it" command that day, but he was able to wait until late night when he wouldn't be observed to activate the Engine. He could plausibly have waited several days until it was left unattended/while setting up distractions, and if it hadn't been several days (over which he presumably found her in the lab in the morning, and got curious) why would Gil think Agatha had been building dingbots in her sleep for several nights, as opposed to in daytime in Moloch's lab? On the other hand, the narrative doesn't actually mention a gap, and he might have extrapolated from her lack of confidence that she didn't know she'd done it. On the third hand, one day (which ended in the mess with Othar) makes his falling in love look less 'ton of bricks' and more 'are we sure he's not wasped?' Aaarggh. 
    * n3p84: Klaus says Agatha "was aboard Castle Wulfenbach for what? Less than two weeks?" 
    * n3p165: Moloch's pretending to be a Spark came 'crashing down several days later'. So, probably Agatha quit very soon after she finished breakthrough - maybe the next day, six days after coming aboard - Moloch counts that day (when Gil found out) as the point where it 'came crashing down', and she then worked in Gil's lab for the rest of the 'less than two weeks' until the Hive Engine was activated. 
  * _Day 1 after the hive engine is activated:_
    * n2p2: Agatha is travelling toward the rising sun, so she has presumably been going all night. 
    * n2p9: Post-crash, Agatha spends 'about two hours' in a fugue building a death ray. 
    * n2p12: Agatha and Krosp set out from the crash site. 'Several hours later, night was beginning to fall.'
  * _Day 2:_
    * n2p15: 'The countryside was beautiful in the early morning light ... they saw no animal larger than a crow all morning.' They find Balthazar this same morning. 
    * n2p25: "The watchman in the last town said he saw Castle Wulfenbach sail past the night before last." 
    * n2p25: "It was only yesterday." Agatha's miscounting if 'dawn' was accurate - it was the day before.
  * _Day 3:_
    * n2p73: 'Payne had kept them moving through the night and all the next day' after leaving in a hurry. They stop at sunset, and Bang arrives soon afterward. 
    * n2p64: Agatha "caused a lot of trouble on Castle Wulfenbach a few days ago", Bang says upon finding the circus. 
    * n2p81: Zeetha promises to start Agatha's warrior training "tomorrow morning".
  * _Day 4:_
    * n2p99: Abner returns 'later that afternoon' on the same day Agatha starts warrior training, apparently after they've made camp. Lars and Agatha encounter the Geisterdamen the same day, and the horse beastie attacks that night. I'm not sure when Agatha found time to build the better death ray. 
    * n2p134: The circus expects to arrive in Zumzum in "a day or two", counting from the afternoon after the night of the horse beastie, and was last there "two years ago".
  * _Day 6?_
    * n2p138: "It was a beautiful morning in the town of ZumZum" when the circus arrives. 
    * n2p142: The J?gers have been "up there for two days". 
    * n2p163: Othar promises to come back for Agatha "in about three months".
  * _Time gets fuzzy while Agatha travels with the circus:_
    * n2p168: Passholdt is "the earliest open pass through the mountains". Which mountains, exactly? The Carpathians? Abner says "it's still a bit early in the year," but it can't be earlier than April. 
    * n2p178: Augie guesses that whatever happened to Passholdt "happened last fall or over the winter". In other words, it's early enough they're not surprised to be the first peopke to try the road. 
    * n2p191: 'Several weeks passed' after Krosp was introduced to Moxana. 
    * n2p196: When Payne's circus meets another in an unnamed town, the competition 'lasted two days'. 
    * n2p211: The circus stops at the villiage of Borlax when 'the local solstice stock fair was winding up', which should make it late June. Unless they're still on the Julian calendar, or otherwise calendrically weird, or don't hold their solstice stock fair on the actual solstice ... 
    * n2p232: 'Several days later ... they had officially exited the Wastelands.' The Silverodeon repair seems to have finished while they were still camped outside Borlax, so this isn't much past the 'solstice'. 
    * n2p233: 'The superior quality of the road was a pleasant change after weeks in the Wastelands ...' What counts as 'Wastelands'? There seem to have been towns in it.
  * _So how far is it to Mechanicsburg?_
    * n2p33: The circus plans to be in Mechanicsburg in "a month or two. Big cheese festival." 
    * n2p93: Payne says, "If we hurry, we'll be in Mechanicsburg in a little over two months". Pix's earlier "a month or two" must have been an underestimate. 
    * n2p206: Mechanicsburg is "a little over a month from now" when Agatha and Zeetha discuss her relationship with Lars. The timeline of this whole arc is hard to pin down; we don't know how long after she joined they got to the Passholdt bridge, or how long after that she started training with quata'aras. 
    * n2p420: In Balan's Gap, Lars says Mechanicsburg is "only about three days from here [Balan's Gap] by horse if we ride steady". 
    * n2p298: 'The last three months' have been hard on Gil. 
    * v5p095: Klaus has been "locked in his lab for the last two months". 
    * n3p18: Agatha has been heading towards Mechanicburg "for the last two months". 
Conclusion: two months travel time at a minimum; the 'last three months' probably rounds up and includes Agatha's time aboard Castle Wulfenbach.

  * _Day 1 in Sturmhalten:_
    * n2p239: 'It was a crisp, frosty dawn ... Last night the circus had arrived at one of the staging areas that existed for arriving or departing trade caravans'. 
    * n2p241: The gate guard claims "Once the Prince gives his approval, you'll be through the town within the hour". How big is Balan's Gap? 
    * n2p244: 'An afternoon rehearsal had revealed excellent acoustics ... It was now evening.'
  * _Day 2, probably:_
    * n2p265: 'Several hours later', in the middle of the night, the soldier shows up to send the circus away. 
    * n2p268: 'After about a half an hour' of Agatha cursing out Anevka, Anevka thinks she has enough readings. 
    * n2p289: When the 'Rescue Party' climbs out of the sewers, 'most of the buildings were dark', implying it's still nighttime. 
    * n2p291: "The town is officially in mourning. No one is allowed on the streets after dark." 
    * n2p292: " ... the Questor is expected to be here in time for the funeral. That should be in about three days." 
    * n2p339: The Rescue Party and Anevka come out of the tunnels. 'The town was still eerily quiet, although there were a few dimly glowing windows now.' 
    * n2p342: Anevka tells Lord Selnikov, "Last night my father found an actress ..." She then notes "the town has been in mourning for hours". At the end of the conversation, 'the eastern sky was beginning to glow with the pre-dawn'. 
    * n2p295: Tarvek says his father died "just last night". 
    * n2p297: Tarvek tells Lucrezia, "you'll have to stay out of sight for the next few days. Until after my father's funeral." 
    * n2p309: Klaus says, "I'll be leaving for Sturmhalten within the next three hours," immediately after getting news of Aaronev's death. "Within twenty-four hours I shall expect to be followed by a full Inspection Team." When does this happen? There's been time for the messenger to reach Castle Wulfenbach, which could have happened by noon of Day 2 if they were close. 
  * _From here it gets odd:_
    * n2p330: Shortly before Agatha wakes up, Tarvek tells Lucrezia, "this body has been without sleep far longer than is healthy". 
    * n2p343: 'Several hours later, Prince Tarvek stumbled into the lab that now housed Moxana ...' Later than what? He tells Moxana, "That woman is going to kill me! I've got to get some sleep ... She only stopped working because I refused her more stimulant ... I havn't seen [Agatha] in hours." It's odd if this is 'several hours later' than Anevka meeting Lord Selnikov at dawn, since Agatha wouldn't need multiple doses of stimulants after one sleepless night. 
    * n2p354: Lord Selnikov tells Anevka, "We've managed to isolate everyone who was at the theatre with your father last night". 
    * v6p031: Lord Selnikov tells Anevka, "We've managed to isolate everyone who was at the theatre with your father the other night". Slight but telling change.
  * _Unspecified night, maybe of Day 2:_
    * n2p358: After she records the message, Agatha's devices 'vanish into the night'. 
    * n2p359: Wooster 'had gained no more than six hours on them [Wufenbach's forces] when he arrives at Balan's Gap. Unfortunately we don't know the speeds of his flyer or the military airships. 
    * v6p61: Daylight is visible through a window when Lucrezia introduces Tarvek to her other self - this is either a continuity error, or an indication the comic and novels are using different timelines. 
    * n2p379: Tarvek tells Veilchen, "We want everything done in daylight, so let her [Anevka] in when the tower clock strikes seven ... Try to keep him [the questor] out until eleven.". 
    * v6p062: Tarvek tells Veilchen to let Anevka in "when the tower clock strikes the hour", and the questor "not until tonight". Another slight but relevant change.
  * _Day 3?:_
    * n2p380: 'The tops of Sturmhalten Castle were glowing with a rosy dawn light' as Anevka prepares to storm the gates. 
    * v6p063: Lord Selnikov tells Anevka, "A rather unusual airship was spotted last night", just before storming the castle. It's broad daylight at this point. 
    * n2p402: "It's dawn" when Wooster arrives at the circus. They spot the Baron's airships just afterward, which doesn't match the timeline of what's happening in the castle. (Also: what did Wooster do with his six-hour lead?) 
    * v6p085: Abner still says "It's dawn" when Wooster arrives at the circus. 
    * n2p381: 'About an hour later,' the townspeople are celebrating and Anevka has just heard that Tarvek has been found in the cellars. About eight, assuming Veilchen's timing was right. 
    * n2p413: Tarvek tells Agatha, "Your body's been awake for _days_ now." Has it?
  * _Presumably night of Day 5?:_
    * n2p449: When Agatha wakes up, "the porthole was dark". 
    * v6p149: It's visibly dawn or sunset as Agatha and Zeetha discuss the locket. 
    * n2p456: Payne says, "We have about an hour and a half before we reach Mechanicsburg". This is shortly after Agatha wakes up. 
    * n2p460: 'The ship turned and headed off, away from the rising sun.'



_So how long did all this take?_  
It seems to have taken longer inside the castle than outside, is the problem. 

By the end of the Sturmhalten plotline, Agatha was in terrible shape, only staying awake because of massive doses of stimulants. But when she met up with the 'Rescue Party', they all acted normal and not particularly tired - okay, Zeetha knows the secret Skifandrian techniques, JÃ¤gers are tough, but Lars and Krosp should have been asleep on their feet. 

There's also the question of how long it takes Anevka to prepare to storm the castle: she's trying to work quickly. In the novel Lord Selnikov refers to gathering the people who were at the theater "last night", in the comic "the other night". If Anevka was able to gather and address everyone by the day after her father's death, why would she wait more than a day from then before storming the castle? The only reason would be if Veilchen hadn't taken down the lightning moat, leaving the storming-the-castle party stuck outside the gates ... for an entire day. Well, like Lunevka says, they'll wait if she says to. 

There has to be enough time after Aaronev Wilhelm's death for a messenger to reach Castle Wulfenbach, three hours for the troops to prepare, then time to reach Sturmhalten. This tells us nothing about timing; Castle Wulfenbach could have been close, or thousands of kilometers away. (Airships in our world had top speeds around 125kph, which is fast enough to get from Paris to Istanbul in under 20 hours, weather permitting. Castle Wulfenbach probably moves slower, but 125kph seems reasonable for troop transports from the support fleet.) Wooster in the experimental flying machine expected to gain 6 hours; this tenatively suggests a longer flying time, since an experimental small plane wouldn't be _that_ much faster than an advanced airship with a powerful engine.

Inside the castle, Lucrezia needs time to rebuild the summoning engine and Agatha to build the beacon, and the Geisterdamen need time to prepare for evacuation and shut off their caverns. Lucrezia probably wasn't present until well past midnight the first night, given the time for Anevka's experiments and Vrin's story. She can probably work fast, though.

This would be easier if we could assume scenes in the comic were in exact chronological order, but I don't think that's a safe assumption. For example, we see Lucrezia's control slip from exhaustion before the Rescue Party _meets Anevka_ , still during the first night! I don't know. Maybe the download process really took it out of her, and Tarvek exaggerated the 'far longer than is healthy' she'd been awake in hopes of sneaking around while she slept? 

Aaaargh.

My speculative best guess at reconciling the timeline weirdness: The messenger arrived at Castle Wulfenbach in the evening of Day 2 and the troops left around sunset; the six hours Wooster gained included 3 hours the troops spent loading up, plus 3 from faster flight speed. The Rescue Party took a nap at the Selnikov's house, re-entered the sewers on afternoon of Day 2, and spent just the one night avoiding Geisterdamen and getting lost. Showtime! was late morning on Day 3; Agatha had been awake for only two days and two nights, but was badly off both because the 'download' was exhausting and because Tarvek, in hopes of getting the upper hand on Lucrezia, was giving her sleeping pills with the stimulants, or overdosing her so she'd crash sooner. That does seem like his sort of plan.

  * _Setting up for Mechanicsburg:_
    * n2p455: Zeetha tells Agatha they've been heading straight for Mechanicsburg, but she must be wrong. If Mechanicsburg is 3 days from Sturmhalten by horse, as Lars claimed, it's more like 3 hours by airship - but we know Klaus is out for 2 days before waking up on the morning of Agatha's arrival. More probable: the circus did set out for Mechanicsburg but took an indirect route and occasionally dropped into valleys for a few hours, to avoid pursuit. 
    * n3p123: Around Mechanicsburg crops 'were in their full summer growth'. 
    * n3p43: The preparations for Zola's airship arrival were rushed, 'less than twenty-four hours from oath to float'. The ship stopped in Vienna to pick up Zola. Not clear where it started, as 'Stockholm Yards' might be geographic or just a company name. 
    * v7p068: Zola claims "they were buzzing about her [Agatha] in Vienna when I left", which must mean she left well after Agatha's signal. How fast is the Pink Airship? 
    * n3p25: Sun was expecting Gil at the Great Hospital "last night". 
    * n3p82: Gil tells Klaus he's been out for "Two days". Does he mean two daylight periods, or forty-eight hours? The former gives more time for various rebellions to start marching on Mechanicsburg, but the latter matches better with the time it would have taken Payne's circus to reach Mechanicsburg. 
    * n3p274: Sergeant Scorp was brought in from Sturmhalten, injured, "two days ago". Same question as with Klaus - 48 hours, or two daylight periods? Also, as he was less seriously injured he might not have been evacuated immediately, and he's mentioning this on the evening of the day Agatha arrives in Mechanicsberg.
  * _Mechanicsburg, Day 1:_
    * n3p1: 'The Great Chronometer in the Red Cathedral had just boomed out the hour. Nine o'clock.' Agatha, Zeetha, Wooster, and Krosp are about to arrive in Mechanicsburg. 
    * v7p004: Van "was out all night. Probably because of all the excitement." In other words, the news about what happened at Balan's Gap was widespread in Mechanicsburg the evening before Agatha arrived - probably because of Klaus and other wounded troops being taken to the Great Hospital. 
    * n3p70: "A strong Heterodyne would take about two hours to truly warp the laws of physics". 
    * n3p219: Shift change on the pink airship: "Three bells!" Since it's dark out already (at a highish latitude, in summer), this probably corresponds to 21:30, three bells of first watch. 
    * n3p237: 'Almost five minutes later, they topped yet another stairwell.' Castle Heterodyne is big. 
    * n3p245: Violetta notes, "The moon's coming up". 
    * n3p255: The Torchmen launched "earlier in the evening" than Gil arrived at the Castle - earlier enough the guards are now relaxed. The Torchmen are now coming back. 
    * n3p288: Agatha hauls Tarvek to the 'Red Playroom'. 'A little less than an hour later', she has him stabilized.
  * _Day 2:_
    * n3p297: Moloch wakes Agatha because "it's getting light out". 'It had been nearing midnight' as she finished the death ray. 
    * n3p300: "Gil's been inside for hours now." 
    * n3p302: 'They [Gil, Zola, et al] had been at work for several hours' trying to fix the room where they're pressganged. 
    * n3p303: Gil, Zeetha, and Tiktoffen are awake, but "Everyone else has been asleep for hours". 
    * n3p311: 'Zola prattled on nonstop for almost ten minutes' as they look for another dead area. Castle Heterodyne is really, really big. 
    * n3p323: Zola thinks "another day is too long" before killing the Castle. 
    * n3p345: "I'd always wondered where that thing went on Tuesdays." Must be Tuesday now. 
    * n3p420: Moloch "saw a big green flash of light about an hour ago" coming from the secret lab, so setting up the three-way Si Vales Valeo took more than an hour after shutting off the Castle. 
    * v10p002: Van notes that the streetlights aren't working. Do they normally do something during the day, or is it night by now? 
    * v10p003: The fight between Klaus and Sun looks like it's happening at dusk. Or it could be happening on a cloudy afternoon, and the weird lighting is due to smoke. Hard to say.
  * _Possibly Day 3, Possibly Afternoon of Day 2:_
    * v10p099: It's daylight when Wooster interrupts Boris's meeting with the JÃ¤gergenerals. 
    * v10p110: Daylight when Agatha, Gil, and Tarvek reach the seraglio - it's shining through the broken roof. 
    * v11p037: Daylight when Zola leaves the castle. 
    * v11p065: Tarvek notes "we might actually get this section repaired before nightfall", whike they're working in the mechanical squid. 
    * v11p069: "I am the person who is putting you to bed! For the first time in days!" It's still daylight. Van has significant stubble, which he didn't when the Castle was shut off. 
    * v11p080: Phil is boring the kids to sleep, so this is presumably evening. 
    * v11p087: "Ladies are delicate creatures who should never be struck ... or awakened too early in the morning ... " Gkika is in pajamas, and was presumably asleep, but the hospital scene suggests it's evening. Maybe Gkika sleeps days? 
    * v11p92: Looks like evening. Vanamonde is more coherent and had a shave, and they've lost Oulbemech and the hammer. Maybe the last scene with Gkika was just out of order in the narrative? 
    * v11p97: "The castle brought us here - it's been acting pretty weird the past couple'a days." You think? 
    * v11p143: Still night as Gil and Vole are about to leave the castle.
  * _Possibly Day 4, Possibly Day 3:_
    * v11p156: It's dawn when the Doom Bell rings. 
    * v12p034: Boris outlines the situation when Gil arrives back at Castle Wulfenbach: "Once the situation became really bad, we sent for reinforcements. We've been bringing in more and more units as quickly as we can. They've been arriving for days ... " How many days? 
    * v12p085: It's hard to tell with the stormclouds, but it looks like evening by the time the Vespiary Squad ship crashes. 
    * v12p125: Pretty clearly night by the time the narwhals show up at the cathedral. 
    * v12p150: The rain starts just after the Knights of Jove show up.
  * _Possibly Day 5, Possibly Day 4:_
    * v13p042: It's visibly daylight when Agatha returns from the roof - it may have been for a while, it's hard to tell in the rain.



_How long is Agatha in the Castle?_  
Either 3 nights and 2 days, or 2 nights and 1 day, but there's not enough internal evidence to tell.

In favor of the shorter value: We only see 'dawn' twice - the morning after she enters (when Von Zinzer wakes her up despite the death ray) and the morning the Doom Bell is rung. Vanamonde was 'out all night, probably because of all the excitement', the night before Agatha arrived on Monday; if he pulled a second all-nighter the first night she was in the Castle, which was also exciting thanks to the Torchmen, he'd probably be pretty mumbly by Tuesday afternoon, when the mysterious assistant tried to put him to bed 'for the first time in days'. Once Agatha leaves she works through a day and night of the Seige of Mechanicsburg, and is still coherent as of the Cathedral ceremony - just plausible given two all-nighters, but not three, given how out-of-it she was in Sturmhalten.

In favor of the longer value: Airships are fast, but a lot of the various forces converging on Mechanicsburg are travelling overland, and we don't know how fast or from where. Boris claims that reinforcements have been arriving 'for days', and until the Torchmen woke up there would seem to have been little reason to send for them. One day to pull off the Si Vales Valeo _and_ fix the castle seems like rushing it; we know the former took hours, and it's before 'nightfall' while they're fixing the third break in the mechanical squid. All the various attackers who converge on Mechanicsburg for the seige have to have taken time to get there; even if they started out as soon as the mess in Sturmhalten happened, how fast could they have been moving? They weren't all coming by air. 

This is all happening fast. If we go by the shorter timelines in both Sturmhalten and Mechanicsburg, it's _less than a week_ from Agatha's last performance with the circus until the time bubble came down on Mechanicsburg; even stretching it as much as possible we get nine days. Most of the mess that resulted in the Empire collapsing must actually have happened afterwards. 

_Not relevant, and yet:_  
I like the idea of the end of the siege coming on the summer solstice. It provides a nice resonance with the 'Good summer solstice story' of the Queen of the Mines and the Lamp that Summoned the Night. There is no evidence for the arc ending _on_ the solstice rather than any other point in early summer, but if the Laws of Narrative Causality have any effect in Europa, it did.

#### Incidental historical, character's backstory with no immediate plot relevance:

  * n1p12: Beetleburg has been defended by Clockwork Army 'over thirty years'. 
  * n1p20: Merlot has worked for Beetle 'for the last twenty years'. 
  * n1p28: 'Boris spent several miserable years as court jester ...' before working for Klaus. 
  * n1p28: TPU has existed 'for the last hundred and twenty years'. 
  * n1p53: Adam constructed Agatha's worktable for "one Yuletide several years ago". Since much later Mittelmind mentions letting the children out for Christmas, it appears both terms are used. 
  * n1p62: Klaus says, " ... since there have been no new sparks in this area [Beetleburg] for several years, I believe this to be a breakthrough!" Implied: Sparks have a random distribution throughout the population, in addition to a genetic factor, and are rare enough for 'several years' to be a long but not suspicious time between breakthroughs - in a university town that presumably attracts scientific talent. Unfortunately we have no population figures for Beetleburg. 
  * n1p109: Sleipnir has been raised by Von Pinn 'for the last ten years'. 
  * n1p115: Theo's parents died fighting air pirates "about twelve years ago". He identifies his mother as Demonica Mongfish here, which contradicts the comic (where he identifies Serpentina) and the later identification of Zola as Demonica's daughter (if he and Zola were siblings, he likely would have mentioned it; he claims to have no living relatives.) 
  * n1p119: Klaus acquired the Radioheads 'a few years ago' in Albania. 
  * n1p135: Stosh says the Lackya were inherited from the Gilded Duke "last year". 
  * n1p158: Dr. Dmitri has "been here for years", Sleipnir says. 
  * n1p194: Klaus, thinking Gil wants Agatha for a lover, suggests "you'll be able to keep her through the summer, which is the best season for that sort of thing." He gets momentarily nostalgic. (About what?) 
  * n1p207: The labs on Castle Wulfenbach are evacuated "every couple of weeks". 
  * n1p257: 'The last several hundred years' have been full of Spark-induced catastrophes. Not all of human history? 
  * n1p251: Theo says, "It took the Baron almost three years to defeat him [Vapnoople] and capture them all [his wolfmen]". 
  * n2p12: Footnote 5: 'Subsequent stories have tried to downsize this structure [Castle Wulfenbach]'. Does this imply it will be destroyed at some point before the Professors Foglio start their books? 
  * n2p42: 'Forty-eight hours' after Bill and Barry crash their airship, they'd defeated the Chatelaine's army and freed the town. They work fast. 
  * n2p62: The Wulfenbach airship takes 'less than thirty seconds' to drop low enough to dock. 
  * n2p75: Marie tells Agatha, "Olga was with us for over five years.". 
  * n2p92: Embi is "one hundred and thirty, at least". 
  * n2p103: Lars joined the show "over ten years ago". 
  * n2p166: A Roman engineer designed the bridge to Passholdt 'around fifteen hundred years ago'. 
  * n2p199: The clank Agatha finds in the woods 'had been abandoned for close to twenty years', she estimates. 
  * n2p234: Lars "spent five years apprenticed to a cheesemaker". 
  * n2p253: Tarvek designed the castle heating system "years ago", and notes his family has had the Spark for "the last five generations". 
  * n2p324: 'Mr. Rovainen had been one of Klaus's cheif assistants for over a decade'. 
  * n2p346: Sturvin and Kalikoff have worked in the sewers "for twenty-seven years". 
  * n2p348: "We ain't been in the Deep-Down in years ... Ten, fifteen years ago, before it got bad ... it was an event if we had one of the Prince's experiments escape". 
  * n2p367: The JÃ¤gers fought the Unseen Empire "a hunnert years ago? Mebbe more ..." "Ve vas mit der Red Heterodyne den.". This would make it more, assuming the Red Heterodyne didn't tremendously outlive his brother (1596-1655). 
  * n3p19: Snails have become a popular food 'over the last ten years'. 
  * n3p47: Kraddock, described as an 'old-timer', 'had started as a "rigger rat" when he was nine'. Airships are not new tech at this point. 
  * n3p56: Fake Heterodynes show up "every year or so, sometimes more," Carson says. 
  * n3p58: Carson says chameleon skin for airships "wowed everyone at the St. Petersburg airshow last fall". 
  * n3p84: Gil quotes something his father said about "a rather catastrophic incident in your father's laboratory when you were eleven", suggesting Klaus had broken through by then. Hmm. 
  * n3p97: Tiktoffen says, "We've been looking for the Razor's power for over three years". 
  * n3p112: Supplies are sent into Castle Heterodyne "twice a week". 
  * n3p162: The Vatican was sacked 'by the Anabaptist Alchemical Army in 1566', after which the Papacy split. 
  * n3p215: "Over the centuries," there have been many false Heterodyne claimants. 
  * n3p235: "Four centuries ago, the Skull-Queen of Skral sent two hundred warrior homunculi to kill Dagon Heterodyne ..." 
  * n3p284: Scorp has "been a soldier close to thirty years". 
  * n3p312: The Mongfishes have schemed 'throughout Europa's history'. 
  * n3p398: The Castle says, "I measure time differently than you." Footnote 85: 'This is the sort of thing that causes Heterodyne scholars to drink/heavily whenever nitpicky scientific journals insist on things like "dates" and "authentication".' 
  * n3p390: Ludmilla and Thegon Ba'Kont "got married last month" from when Agatha arrived in Mechanicsburg, probably in May. 
  * n3p449: Sanaa tells Othar, "A week after I left home - following you - our ship was attacked ..." Later, the Ulysses engine means "it would take us thirteen years to go twenty-five kilometers". 
  * n3p474: Footnote 99 says Georges Feydau's clank duplicate 'functioned for another two decades' after his death, writing increasingly strange plays due to 'lack of maintenance'. 
  * n3p476: 'Snaug had been in the Castle for close to six months.' She thinks Von Zinzer, there about two months, 'was still alive only because no new prisoners had lasted long enough to force him out of the kitchen'. Implied: there have been multiple new prisoners in the two months since Von Zinzer's arrival. 
  * v7p071: One of the tombs (the visible part of the name reads ARD ROD) has a Born date of 1575 and Died dates of 1602, 1604, 1609, 1614, 1625. Maybe that was the vampire. 
  * v11p013: Mezzasalma tells Mittlemind, "Not fair! You disillusioned that chap last month." 
  * v11p143: "Hyu try puttink op vit it for a _hundred und fifty years_." Vole is still pretty young for a jÃ¤ger. 
  * v12p142: General Zog says of the dragon, "Hy thot ve took care ov all ov dem a coupke hundred years ago.". 
  * v12p162: The Baron got the Phlostigon Powered Mantigoons off Professor Ponglenoze "last year". 
  * v12p170: Franz has served the Heterodynes "A pretty long time. Couple hundred years, I think." 
  * v13p025: The Master Sergeant says, "I been watchin' them cloud jockeys sail clean over the real fightin' for twenty years ..." This implies airships have been used in war for at least that long.



##### So What Does All This Mean?

Events important to the main plotline we can confidently place:

  * 216 years ago: Andronicus Valois, the Storm King, marries Euphrosynia Heterodyne.
  * 3 years, 4 months before the attack on Castle Heterodyne: Lucrezia sends Klaus away.
  * 1 year, 1 month before the attack on Castle Heterodyne: Klaus Barry Heterodyne is born.
  * ~19 years before story starts, time of year unspecified: Attack on Castle Heterodyne.
  * 18+ years before story starts, probably about 6 months after the attack on Castle Heterodyne: Agatha is born.
  * 16 years before story starts (time of year unknown, but close to exactly 3 years after the Great Attack): The Other's attacks end, and Bill and Barry vanish. Shortly therafter, Klaus returns to Europa and starts to conquer it.
  * 13 years before story starts (spring or summer): Agatha starts breaking through; Barry gives her the locket to supress her spark.
  * 11 years before story starts, maybe a little more (possibly late autumn): Barry leaves Beetleburg, expecting to be gone a few months, and never returns.
  * 10 years before story starts (early spring): Baron Wulfenbach annexes Beetleburg:
  * 3 years before story starts, maybe a little more: Zeetha arrives in Europa, and wipes out Bangladesh DuPree's base while escaping.
  * Slightly less than 3 years before story starts (late spring): Aaronev Wilhelm tries to use Anevka in the beacon engine; Master Payne's circus passes through Balan's Gap and Tarvek confiscates Tinka to reverse-engineer; Anevka gets her clank body. 
  * March to April of year the story starts (18?92): Agatha breaks through, is taken to Castle Wulfenbach, escapes after two weeks on board.
  * April to June: Agatha travels with Master Payne's circus, ending in Balan's Gap.
  * June: The events at Sturmhalten and the Seige of Mechanicsburg.



Everything else is unclear or contradictory, everything more detailed is fuzzy. 

I'll come back and work out everything after the time bubble goes up in twelve years, when Act 2 is written.


	2. Industrial Casus Belli

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some ideas thanks to iztarshi and tanoraqui; see http://iztarshi.tumblr.com/post/138609658691/sparks-and-patrons .

The blurbs for 'Girl Genius' begin: 'In a world where the Industrial Revolution became an all-out war ...' It's a clever pun, of course, but it also speaks to one of the more interesting facets of the series, namely, the question of why history hasn't diverged _further_ from   
our world.

##### Technology in modern Europa

Europa has fast train transport, functional airships, an understanding of electricity - all things our world had in the 1890s that are a decent guess for when GG takes place. It also has robots, some level of artifical intelligence, earthmoving machines faster and more effective than modern tunnel borers, and walking war machines that could probably stomp on our world's tanks. On the biological side: birth control (Trusty Maiden's Weed), some nasty engineered diseases (Hogfarb's Resplendent Immolation. Presumably. Well, do you know any diseases that turn people bright blue?), the capacity to literally bring people back from the dead, and various highly-modified animals and plants such as the mimmoths. Radio, in some form ("According to their radio traffic, they are in the middle of a battle with giant ants" - v13p031) but apparently not for public use. 

(Note: we know little enough about the world outside Europe as it exists in GG that I don't think useful conclusions can be drawn. Bill and Barry visited China at least once and contributed to Dr. Sun getting exiled; Theo's father had a lab in India; lots of characters living in Europa look African or Indian, implying regular immigration; the Americas are cut off and people's idea of a sterotypical American looks Plains Indian; Britain has colonies (they're mentioned in footnote 18 of the third novel); the Corbettities are 'making inroads' into Asia and the Middle East (footnote 75); none of that proves anything about their tech level. I'd expect it to be similar to Europa in many regions, notably lower in others, for the same reasons that applied in the real world. There's a reason I'm titling these rambles 'Clanks, Germs, & Steel'.)

So what doesn't Europa have?

Telegraphs - for long-distance communication, Wulfenbach forces rely on the Heliolux Air Fleet, which seems to use powerful visible light. (We don't know how civilians communicate over long distances.) Electronic anything, with the caveat that they seem to use vacuum tubes and relay controls in clanks and medical equipment. Nuclear power. Paved maintained roads outside the cities and close fiefdoms, although we've seen a Roman bridge in the Wastelands and Roman roads may still be in regular use. Possibly, antibiotics; the Beetleburg doctor reacted to Omar's mysterious death by ordering a quarantine. 

It seems unlikely they have a reliable petroleum supply. Madam Desmana says "You have made my poor dicta-clank earn its antracite today!" (v15p108), and Smilin' Stev seems to run on wood, sensibly for something that has to travel the Wastelands. Autocars exist, but both Prince Aaronev's (v5p55) and Colette's (v15p88) put out so much dark smoke, they're quite likely coal-burning as well; they're also owned by wealthy and powerful people, and if even _they_ don't use petrol engines, either no one has worked out how to refine petrol, or nobody sells it to Europa regularly. 

(So what do the engines of Gil's flyers burn? He mentions a "fuel additive", so it's probably a liquid, but it could easily be alcohol- or peroxide-based - something that has to be made in a chemistry lab.)

(So what do the engines of _airships_ burn? No clue. Methane? Hydrogen?)

Equally telling is what it's only gotten recently. Arc lamps, used as streetlights in Balan's Gap, are described in the second novel as 'newfangled'; electric street lights imply an electric supply, either mains power, or batteries that would need to be recharged very frequently. There's mention in the novels of the recent rise of factories and mass-production tools, which seems likely to have happened under Baron Wulfenbach - factories mean measurement standardization, which means a central governing authority encouraging standardization. Witness how all the characters give distances in kilometers, and the business where nobody knows _whose_ leauges to use for "From Mechanicsburg two leauges stay" (v8p76). Albia of Britain might also have pushed for standard measures: she does command an Empire, and in our world Britain was at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution. 

(Pause for a second to consider the messes that metric/imperial conversions could cause when done by people with the ability to warp the laws of physics.)

The common factor between almost all the things Europa has, I think, is that they're self-contained. Wood-powered clanks keep moving until they run out of fuel. Airships don't need roads; airships with harpoon landing gear don't even need ground crew. Mimmoths spread the same way mice do. Even Castle Heterodyne recharges itself with the waterwheel and lightning collectors - all of Mechanicsburg can be considered as one giant clank. It _is_ infrastructure, but it doesn't _use_ infrastructure.

There's one massive exception to that, in the form of the Corbettite Railway. They have built and, more impressively, maintained a rail network spanning Europa. The railways are infrastructure on which the rest of the community can depend. But trusting them goes against Sparky instincts. The Beast was meant to be self-sufficient, and the train Agatha helped create didn't need rails. Even from within the Corbettites, Brother Mattias was trying to create a method for growing traintracks on the fly. 

In summary: Sparks don't like to depend on systems outside their control to maintain their creations, but will gladly take advantage of whatever is at hand to create.

##### Sparks in history - speculative edition

Of course, it's easier to build things when you have supplies. Modern Sparks are in an excellent position to take advantage of whatever industrial processes exist, at least in major towns - for example, Agatha's first creation as a spark, the 'Search Engine', used a pre-existing steam tractor for power. And however romantic it was that Gil put Agatha's name on all the bolts in his lightning generators, he certainly didn't engrave them by hand.

(Another thought on standardization: maybe the way all the little parts on Castle Wulfenbach have the Wulfenbach sigil is a way of assuring mechanics that they're made to Wulfenbach standard measure, and really are interchangable with other parts that look the same?)

A bolt factory is not the sort of thing a Spark would create. It requires a steady supply of steel to operate, the constant attention of machinists and mechanics - plenty of automation is theoretically available, but until and unless the process of bolt-making and all the ways it can go wrong are completely understood, the only true 'automation' option would be a human-level mind, as complex as Castle Heterodyne or the Muses. At a minimum, you need a human to take orders and arrange deliveries, and accept payments, something Sparks are not known for worrying about. Sparks may create amazing machines, but they don't, and can't, create ordinary industries.

So: what did Sparks do before any of them were likely to have a ready supply of fittings, piping, gears, or any other of the vital supplies that could only be _manufactured in quantity_ after industrialization?

Some of them probably set their minions to making parts, but that works only with raw materials readily at hand, and skilled workers for minions. Mechanicsburg might have worked on this model - as Carson put it, "Most of us aren't Sparks, of course, but a lot of us have similar tendencies" (v7p42). It certainly doesn't lack for craftsmen in the story's present. The second novel's prologue mentions Sparks with _patrons_ , which adds a piece to the puzzle: some Sparks may have arranged for supplies by attaching themselves to the service of a more powerful, wealthy person, who could simply hire non-Sparky craftsmen to forge, carve, or hammer out parts for them. 

Some of them might have focused on medical or biological work instead, reducing the need for raw materials - they would still need special tools, but a bonesaw, scalpels, and suture thread are easier to acquire or make than the parts for even a small steam engine. A Spark who focused on crosspollinating plants or breeding animals, like the anonymous creator of mimmoths, wouldn't need any tools that couldn't be found on an ordinary farm. 

Some of them, it's likely, didn't exist. If we assume Spark potential is equally distributed throughout the population, a smaller population means fewer Sparks to begin with - and other factors could decrease the number further. Anti-Spark prejudice. The tendency to be destroyed by their own creations.* We don't even know that Sparkiness is equally distributed throughout the population; some external factor could have kept their numbers low. Agatha was prevented from breaking through by a locket that disrupted her concentration; how would a less powerful Spark have fared in the face of childhood malnutrition that lowered their intelligence, or chronic environmental lead poisoning? 

Or perhaps something more exotic - Sparkiness is contagious, for example, and someone's odds of breaking through go down a thousandfold if they've never used a Sparkwork device or, say, eaten Spark-bred food. I do like the idea of the Industrial Revolution being driven by the popularity of chocolate-coated mimmoths.

There's an expectation by Agatha's time that rulers will be Sparks. The mad despot with his army of minions is a stock character. But this wasn't always the case - if it were, the Fifty Families wouldn't have ever been important, and the Sparks at Andronicus's court wouldn't have had patrons. Whether the Spark is actually getting stronger, or they're just using it more effectively, Sparks have had a turn in their fortunes within the last two centuries.

We know that Sparks weren't always called Sparks: the prologue to the second novel speaks of 'the thinkomancers of Western Europe'. Although '-mancy' technically refers to divination, it's often used to imply magic in general. Which is to say, people once thought of Sparks as people who could do magic by thinking. Not an unfair description.

Maybe a better question than 'what did Sparks create with before they had supplies?' is 'how does the Spark manifest itself without a technological problem to solve?' Irregularly, I think. Sparks bend the world to their will. Technology is the most obvious tool, but it's possible the original word for Spark was _wizard_.

##### Sparks in history - canonical version 

All the above, of course, is speculative. What's been stated outright about Sparks from long before Agatha's time?

Andronicus Valois was active a little over two centuries before Agatha, before 'powerful ruler' implied 'Spark' as a rule. He tried to 'domesticate' Sparks by inspiring them to build infrastructure, and certainly having a lot of Sparks gathered at the Palace of Enlightenment could have inspired other scientists and engineers to join them, making a fertile ground for innovation and collaboration.

The Spark of Andronicus's court we know the most about is Van Rijn, creator of the Muses. He seems to have specialized in clankwork - Agatha recognizes Moxana as being a Van Rijn before recognizing her as a Muse. Delicate work, requiring small and precise parts. If he didn't make much he could have made his own parts; with Andronicus as a patron he could have hired excellent technicians as lab assistants.

The Master of Paris "fought by the side of the Storm King at Sturmhalten" (v15p81), and so must have had some impressive Sparky accomplishments to his credit even then, but we don't know what. Except, obviously, he figured out how to extend his own life, and can't have done so too long afterwards. It could be a chemical effect like the Jägerdraught, or a series of ad-hoc treatments he's refined over time. 

It was about Andronicus's time, as well, that someone bred mimmoths - explicitly _bred_ rather than engineered, while trying to get horse-sized mounts.

The Heterodynes go back a long way. Their most impressive creations are the chemical and biological Jägerdraught, brewed from the Dyne, and the artificial intelligence of Castle Heterodyne, powered by lightning and with very strange operating principles. (More recently we have the Beast of the Rails, built by Agatha's grandfather Saturn and therefore probably about fifty years old, recent enough to have used mass-manufactured parts.) Mechanicsburg is a strange place, and the Heterodynes have long had some of the most technically skilled minions.

(We don't know when the anonymous female Spark who created Trusty Maiden's Weed was active. It could have been around since antiquity, as seems reasonable if it's a silphium cultivar, or it could have showed up less than a few decades ago, which explains why it hasn't started the Sexual Revolution yet. I'll come back to that in another chapter.)

The Heterodynes have been in Mechanicsburg for a thousand years. Further back, we know of exactly one spark by name: Meton of Athens, "a famous spark ... in Ancient Greece" (v15p92). He saw the Muse of Time, and wrote about it. What else he did, we have no idea.

All of which us to say, we simply don't know much about Sparks from the Storm King's time and before. They existed, and were at least recognizable to later researchers as Sparks. What they were in their own context is less certain.

##### I want my flying car!

The point of all this: given the awesome things Sparks can do, why does Europa of Agatha's time still look so much like Europe circa 1900? Where are the supersonic transports and tubes through the planet, the moon colonies, the friendly AIs that keep the weather pleasant, the nanobot factories? They've had thousands of years to work, and they get to treat the laws of physics like parking regulations!

Out of universe the answer is obvious. You can't run a gaslamp fantasy on rocket fuel. I think, though, that it's answerable in-universe by three factors that amplified each other. 

First, the difficulty of collaboration. Sparks are rare enough that simple bad luck or logistics might, for most of history, kept most of them from meeting another Spark in their life. Master Payne's "brilliant, but born in a poor village ... Without any education, what can they do?" was probably the rule. Add in that Sparks tend to have difficult personalities and argue endlessly, and you get vast time and effort wasted on reinvinting the wheel.

Second, the impossibilty of scaling up. It's very hard to even repair Sparkwork devices, and that means that no matter how clever the device, it literally can't be mass-produced - or even copied in small quantities by skilled mechanics. The only exceptions are biological creations that can breed. This inspires Sparks to create singular, overwhelming creations - Mr. Tock at Beetleburg, for example - but prevents their innovations from becoming a part of everyday life. Look at how the invention of the printing press affected our world by making books popular. 

Third, and perhaps most importantly, the difficulty of starting from scratch. I've talked about this already. Sparks in isolated places without raw materials will have a much harder time building anything than Sparks in a trading town. (Biological work is something of an exception to this, and it's possible clanks have only recently come to prominence - ressurection is mentioned as a frequent breakthrough project.) So: it makes perfect sense that Sparks started building much more impressive creations after the Industrial Revolution, once they had something to build with.

##### Industrial Footsoldiers

As the first novel put it: "And of course, regular science marched on, if only in self-defense."

Sparks create unique wonders. Mechanics, technicians, and the kind of scientists that _don't_ break the laws of physics create everyday, mass-producable wonders. You can build the former out of the latter, but not vice-versa.

There are enough hints at a similar history - the Romans built bridges, someone from France called Valois became a powerful king, Alphonse Mucha existed and made art, Britain has an empire that has little to do with continental Europa - that I feel confident the Heterodynes were a massive, self-contained exception, most of Europan history (in the broad sense of cultural movements, not the the narrow who-was-king-when) simply _wasn't affected_ by the occasional presence of Sparks, and this didn't change until well into the Rennaisance, probably not until the Storm King started to build his coalition. Even then, the dominance of Sparks on the political landscape didn't happen until heavily mechanized armies became practical - monsters tend to turn on their creators. (Mechanicsburg is once again the exception.)

Moloch von Zinzer said that "These days, machines are more important than soldiers." He must have a basis for comparison to say it, even if it's his grandpa's stories of the local equivalent of riding with the Jägers. Not too long ago soldiers were more important.

Sparks might have nudged their world toward the Industrial Revolution, might have helped make resources accessible or, with their fantastic unique creations, inspired more mundane, repeatable versions. But ultimately, the Industrial Revolution was about mass production. Sparks weren't, and couldn't be, responsible for it.

They could, and did, _use_ it. And when in effect every Spark in Europa had thousands and thousands of skilled mechanics for minions? That's when the real trouble started.


	3. * footnote: A Tale of Two Sparks

* (Imagine a hypothetical young Spark, born in the little town of Zumzum, on the same day that Andronicus Valois is born in far-away France. We'll call him Andrei. Andrei's parents run a potato farm, but their house is still inside the town walls, they're not fools, there are _things_ out there. They tell their children terrible stories. But young Andrei is scientifically-minded, and wonders how a monster twenty feet tall could even walk with legs proportional to a chicken's, and why glowing eyes and teeth don't warn off its prey. One night he 'borrows' a ladder and sneaks over the wall out of sheer curiousity, and goes for a walk in the woods. And when Andrei sees a glow in the distance he just has to get a closer look. There's a stream in the way, but he can leap across on these rocks, right? 

The third one is loose. He cracks his skull when he falls in, and the desperate search parties from Zumzum don't find the body for three days.

Or: he doesn't. He goes home in the morning, cold and miserable, and gets a thrashing. Years pass, and Andrei only goes outside the walls in daylight and slowly develops a festering resentment for this dull little town that keeps jumping at shadows. He learns how to run the farm, but his heart isn't in it. He tries to step out with a few girls, but none of them really want to _talk_. And one day some boy who keeps getting on his nerves insults him, and nineteen years of frustration come to a head, and Andrei goes home and builds a wall-climbing flamethrower out of his mother's teakettle, six garden forks, a broken insecticide sprayer, and the contents of his junk drawer. He takes it to the boy who insulted him's window and lets it loose. 

Half an hour later the fire is out and the boy's three older brothers have broken more than half his bones with a fireplace poker. They didn't even take the time to get a proper mob together. It isn't tried as a murder; people are gentle about it with Andrei's grieving family, but everyone knows, out here, madboys should be put down before they can hurt anyone.

Or, and here is pure speculation: he doesn't go home and build something. He goes to the tavern instead and has a few beers, and they're very good, and Andrei relaxes just enough that he doesn't hit breakthrough that night. A year passes. It's a hard winter, a late spring, and in the middle of ploughing his father has a heart attack, is left bedridden and Andrei's mother stays home to care for him in his convalesence. Andrei and his sisters have to finish the ploughing and the planting and they work from dawn until the gate-closong bell, and Andrei is buzzing with ideas but almost too tired to move, and if he starts doing strange things with the trowel and the eyes, his sisters are working too hard to care. 

He wonders later if he was sick, from how bright the sun looked and how continually hungry he felt, but sets the thought aside. When the planting is done Andrei sleeps for two days. It is after this that he starts getting strange ideas, ways to cross cultivats for increased yeild and particularly good flavor. By the next year his father is much recovered, but aware of his age and his reduced health, lets Andrei take over the management of the farm. Andrei grows the most amazing potatoes; within a few years he has bred a baking variety that already tastes of butter.   
There are wars, the Storm King is gathering armies against the Heterodyne, the Storm King has fallen. None of that concerns Andre: it is happening somewhere over the mountains. He never marries, gains a reputation for eccentricity, but he can grow potatoes as big as a child's head that fluff up like clouds, so much is forgiven him. Andrei dies in bed at seventy-four. The farm goes to his eldest neice, but she doesn't have his knack and barely suceeds at keeping his cultivars going. Sometimes she grumbles that he must have been a madboy, but she doesn't think it, not seriously. He was too quiet. 

That, too, is one thing that might have become of a minor Spark. How many Sparks went to their graves as that weird lady who was _very_ good with bees, or the blacksmith whose chains never broke and whose knives very rarely needed sharpening, or even the beloved grandmother who arranged everyone's marriages and the villiage feels strangely adrift without? 

Sparks, after all, are those strange, violent monsters out of stories. Take an isolated settlement where no-one has seen a breakthrough, a lack of existing machinery or large animals to do something truly dangerous with, a Spark whose talents are subtle - and they might escape notice completely. Talent needs cultivation to grow; small towns and no education and nothing to build on make bad soil.

Two hundred years or so after Andrei had his subtle breakthrough, his many-times-great-niece is born. She's born in Zumzum, but she doesn't like it much and when she turns sixteen, she takes the train to Paris to seek her fortune. She finds a suitably charming lad and they start a bakery. In due time she has a son - born, not that she knows it, on the same day as Agatha Heterodyne. She calls him Andrei.

Like his mother - unlike his many-times-great-uncle - Andrei learns to read. In fact he learns early, and by the time they send him to school, Andrei is tired of picture books. His delighted mother adds him to her account at the local lending library. Andrei starts going through their gardening section, then their botany section. 

The stories he hears about the steam turbines that run the Underground seem too big to be real, so Andrei sneaks out one night to take a look for himself. He makes it to the turbine building without difficulty; Paris is not free of footpads, but a seven-year-old is not a tempting target, the less so for what the Master would do to if they were caught at it. He finds a convenient air vent - it's latched, but he always carries wire and it's simple to bend it to open the lock. On the other end there's a complicated filter arrangement, he has to turn one partway to reach the mechanism for another, and jump on a loose panel in a side section with no airflow to rattle something loose, but he can see a red glow, he just needs to reach for this handle which - makes the floor drop away. Oops.

He lands on something that feels like a giant pillow in a tiny room with a barred window on the door. A few minutes later the guards retrieve him, laughing. Another kid. The system works. They bring him to the foreman's observation room to watch the turbines from above, until someone can walk him home. His parents are furious. But a week later, when the letter arrives offering him a transfer to the Pont-Marie School for Scientific Potential, they are proud.

Andrei enjoys the challenge of Pont-Marie, but he is still shy and nervous and there are bullies everywhere. He spends much of his time in the conservatory, crossbreeding herbs and flowers. By sixteen he has created lavender with three times the natural amount of oil - a subtle achievement, but one the apothecaries and parfumiers of Paris appreciate. 

His machine-obsessed classmates are less appreciative. One day Andrei finds his stock of experiments uprooted, his careful signs replaced with an obscene drawing. He is so angry he can barely think, but there's an odd kind of clarity in it. He buys a hot pepper plant, a venus flytrap, a strangler vine. He sits up all night with his brushes, carefully twines roots together in fertilizer solution.

By the end of the week his temper has faded and the hybrid guard plant has overtaken the student conservatory, caused six serious burns and two broken legs. It is not the worst or most surprising thing to happen at Pont-Marie. It is the sort of thing Pont-Marie is _for_ , and the teachers give Andrei soothing tonics and call for volunteers from the University to prune it down. 

One of the volunteers - a boy with a friendly smile and viciously effective machete - takes Andrei aside afterwards. Yeah, he tells him, you messed this one up. That always happens with breakthrough projects. It's okay. You'll do better next time, right?

Andrei does. 

And the time after that, and - he thinks he sees why so many Sparks are manical now. The joy of creation is downright addictive. Andrei, for once, is enjoying himself. 

Maybe it won't last, but as he looks over his tomato cuttings, already feeling the fugue tugging at his mind, it's enough for now.)


	4. A Tour Of Mechanicsburg

How exactly is this infamous town laid out? Could we draw a map of it? I tried and failed, but here are my notes from the attempt!

##### Town Walls and Environs

The third novel opens with a traveller's account of arriving at Mechanicsburg, passing through "the last of the great Iron Gates" and watching "the River Dyne as it roared far beneath the Bridge of Thorns". Gil says that "If the defenses were working, an army couldn't even get up the pass" (n3p198), so there must be a pass nearby - he later puts up gates "in und out ov de valley" (v13p127), again suggesting a single pass. The valley "encompasses less than fifty square kilometers" (n3p272). The area near town is extensively farmed, but uninhabited (n3p123). 

When Agatha arrives at Mechanicsburg, Carson von Mekkhan is waiting at a gate decorated with skeletons, with "MECHANICSBURGH" over the arch (v7p5). It overlooks a river (v7p6), with steep hills on the oppsite side; road approaches on the other bank, then turns over a bridge toward the gate. This might be the Bridge of Thorns, although the river isn't very far below. I don't think this gate is ever named, but I'll call it the Skeleton Gate.

The same scene is described in the novel, with the added note that "most of the town's visitors arrived by way of the airstrip across the river" (n3p15). The Dyne "meandered through town before flowing through an elaborate set of gates to the valley beyond" (n3p21) The airstrip "across the river" is next to a Corbettite rail terminal, about a kilometer outside town (n3p42). 

Selnikov's war stompers are "advancing on the Black Gate!" (v7p90). Gil goes out this gate to meet them (v7p99), and it's obviously a different gate - two statues of armored figures for decoration, and a sign reading "Trade Entrance, Invade in Front". The Black Gate must be in the eastern wall, where Agatha watches the battle from (v7p97). 

There's also the Schneaky Gate (v7p113), but it seems to move around.

The Situation Room on Castle Wulfenbach includes a model of Mechanicsburg (v11p88). We can see the Skeleton Gate with a road leading down to the bridge, then, going clockwise: a long straight stretch of wall with a giant humanoid figure outside, a shorter straight stretch next to a red thing presumably representing a large troop emplacement, a smaller river whose source can't be seen but that might be flowing out of Mechanicsburg, a slightly concave section of wall next to a broad, empty plain, and a rounded wall backing up to an impassably steep hill. There are several outlying structures that might be the railway terminal.

The original seige plan included bringing troops in from the north and telling citizens to evacuate from the south gate (v12p153), so we know the north and south sides of town are accessible. The War Stompers approached from the east. That means the impassable hill must be to the west, placing the Skeleton Gate to the north side of town. 

Just one problem with this - going by the novel, it seems to be to the south. After Agatha enters she gets a panorama of the town: "To the west, an immense factory complex dominated the skyline ... To the north, an ornate, red stone Gothic cathedral rose, defiant beside the dark bulk of the ruined castle. To the east, a miniature lake and several acres of greensward gave way to orchards - which abutted a large white building that could only be the Great Hospital." (n3p21) This agrees with the relative placement of buildings inside the town, but not with the Situation Room map unless Mechanicsburg has two gates overlooking two bridges.

The Genuine Heterodyne Schneeky Stoff in the cave hideout (v13p126,7,8) gives another overview of the town - and it's very confusing. The hills to the west look to still be there, the river outside the Skeleton Gate has vanished, and there's a new lake with a river flowing from it. It's hard to tell how much extra area is enclosed in the new town walls - we can't see the originals at all. Maybe the Sketelon Gate overlooked the Dyne, which has stopped flowing with its source cut off, or maybe there's so much thorn hedge that river is hidden inside the thorns. 

Tenative conclusion: the Situation Room map was shown incorrectly; there is an impassable hill to the west of town, but the Skeleton Gate is to the south, overlooking the Dyne; the Dyne leaves town to the southeast, then curves sharply west to carve out a gorge.

##### Landmarks Inside The Walls

We know a fair amount about the internal layout of Mechanicsburg, thanks to a tourist guide included with the third novel. [Iztarshi has helpfully posted it, at this elegant and finely-crafted link.]() In short: the Castle is at the center of town, surrounded by five wedge-shaped districts. Going clockwise, those are the Great Hospital and environs, the Greens (parkland), the Field of Weights (retail and entertainment), the Shambles (residential), and the Court of Gears (industrial). 

Carson gives Agatha directions from the Skeleton Gate to the Hospital: "Straight down this avenue until you get to a square with a statue of the Heterodyne Boys. Turn left, and you'll see the signs" (v7p9). This puts the Skeleton Gate westish from the Hospital, opening into the Court of Gears.

Zola's pink airship drops her off in the square with the statue of the Heterodyne Boys (v7p26), identified in the novels by the creative name "Bill and Barry Square". When it takes off, it's visible from, and very near to, Klaus's hospital room (v7p34). The left front side of the broken Castle is also visible from Klaus's hospital room (v7p59), as is the area to the east of town outside the Black Gate (v7p98), where Gil fought Selnikov's war stompers. The Hospital must be in the northeast part of town. 

Confusingly, when Sergeant Scorp amd the unnamed captain are chatting on the Hospital wall (v9p1), the _right_ side of the Castle is visible behind them. I think this one must be an art error. That, or the Hospital is just enormous and Klaus's room is at the east end. 

Gil is able to visit Mama Gkikas's on the way to the Hospital (v12p7), but he might have taken a detour thanks to all the invading troops. I'm guessing it's in the Field of Weights.

Getting to the Castle's winding walk requires crossing a bridge (v7p22), but it's not clear whether this is over a moat or over the first stretch of the Dyne. Zola crosses the same bridge on her way in (v7p28), starting from Bill and Barry Square. Combined with the direct avenue from the Skeleton Gate, this puts Bill and Barry Square to the north side of the Castle. Businesses on the square include the "Hetero Diner", vile puns apparently being a universal urge.

We get a beautiful view of Mechanicsburg on v7p10-11, showing the right front side of the broken Castle with the long, winding front walk and gatehouses, the 'Mouth of the Dyne' sculpture about level with the castle gate, and smokestacks in the background to the left, far from the Castle. A building just left of and behind the Castle looks like the Red Cathedral. The Cathedral must be to the east of the Castle, maybe in the Greens. During the seige, Agatha and her advisors discuss an invading force "in the North Windings" that are falling back to the east - "With the Dyne to the south, they'll funnel into the Greens -" ... "Now, you're sure they won't take the Cathedral?" (v12p38), which also places the Cathedral on the Greens. 

We see the same smokestacks and side of the Cathedral when Vanamonde is directing the town defenses (v11p92), although the perspective suggests he's a lot closer. 

The Doom Bell is within a few blocks of the Castle (v7p56), but it's not obvious which side. It is visible from the Gate of Chimes (v11p155).

Gunnery Post XI is at the Eastern Gate (v12p16), which may be the same as the Black Gate or may be somewhere else on the east wall; we don't get a good look at it. Business visible from Gunnery Post XI: Roughshod & Daughter Shoes, Mechanicsburg Monster & Construct Credit Union. 

The Generals' meeting room is to the north - "der north side ov town vas already pretty messed up" (v12p84) when they saw the Vespiary Squad ship crash on it. 

Underneath the town are the Caverns of Mechanicsburg (n3p193), which are a very intersting place in the sense of 'may you live in interesting times'.

##### Buildings That Exist, Details Unknown

Not counting shops we only see advertised - half of those are shoutouts.

  * Heliotrope Scribe and Book Works (v7p3) 
  * Sausage Factory, actually a coffee shop and Vanamonde's office (v7p56) 
  * Old Town Hall, possibly burnt down (v12p11) 
  * Iron Bridge (v12p11) 
  * Heterodyne Haus of Waffles (v12p14) 
  * The Fitting Room, corsets & bustles (v12p15) 
  * The Jägerhall, currently used as a slaughterhouse (v12p16) 
  * Heterodyne Museum (v12p28) 
  * Mechanicsburg Museum of Armor and Military Science (v12p75) 
  * Markyys Snails (v12p81) 
  * Department of Public Works, next to a substation (v12p113) 
  * Emil's House of Cheese, "Be all that you can brie!" (v12p42) 
  * Ellarree & Daryavesh Eldrich Meat, today's special: shoggoth (v13p47)



##### Yonder Lies The Castle Of My Father

The Castle's front gate, at the top of the winding walk, has a tall, narrow door with a large trilobite decoration (v7p116). There are several other, larger doors beside it (n3p148); no word on whether these have separate names. They include "intricately carved central doors ... faced with solid gold". 

Tarvek and Violetta enter the Castle through the Phosphorus Gate (v8p88, n3p236).

Gilgamesh enters through the Gate of Lamps, which is less decorated and has large lanterns hung on each side, and appears to be at the top of a causeway beside a gargoyle statue (v8p116,17). (This gate is visible from the Laboratory of Light (n3p267).) He leaves through the Gate of Chimes (v11p143), which is beside a large courtyard and has a relief sculpture of two fanged women supporting a trilobyte over the doors (v11p149). Agatha goes out this same gate to proclaim her conquest (v11p155). The town council were waiting in a nearby gatehouse to greet her. 

A Red Gate is mentioned (v7p67), but without details. 

So, there are at least five named 'gates' (Main, Red, Phosphorus, Lamps, Chimes) to the Castle - but only one visible causeway. We never see the southwest side of the Castle and there might be a second causeway there; for the rest, some of the 'gates' might be the different doors at the front gate, or different names for the same entrance, or maybe the causeway wraps around the castle once it's inside the wall.

There's a breakable (glass?) domed roof over the library (v11p37), and a similar roof on the seraglio (v10p110). Neither are easily visible in exterior views, so they're likely toward the center of the Castle. The conservatory is near the seraglio (v10p113).

The Great Movement Chamber is very far below the inhabited areas of the castle (v9p109), but the Mouth of the Dyne, when we see the outside of the castle (eg v7p11, v13p21) looks about level with the gate. I wouldn't have put it past some Heterodyne ancestor to install pumps for dramatic effect, though. Or maybe the Castle is bigger outside than in. It doesn't help that the hill it's on is so tall; for all we know the secret passage that "just keeps going down" past Lucrezia's secret lab (v10p101) goes out to the street.

Not far from the front gate is the Octagon (v7p67, n3p98), a large room where the castle prisoners often spend time. 

I won't try to work out where the other rooms in the Castle are in relation to each other or the gates, but we know some of them are:

  * Gallery of Razors, Room of Lead (n3p97, v7p66) 
  * Room of Rust and Hooks (n3p155) 
  * The Red Hall (n3p173, v8p26) 
  * Serpent's Gallery (n3p308, v9p33) 
  * Corridor of Fish, Corridor of Glass (v8p25), Corridor of Smoke (v8p27) 
  * The Red Playroom (n3p, v9p13) 
  * Impluvium (v11p46) 
  * Nursery (v11p46) 
  * Blue Corridor, in the Tower of Prisms (v11p50) 
  * Psychological torture chamber (v11p57) 
  * Tower of Green Bone (v11p124) 



##### In Conclusion

Mechanicsburg is confusing.


End file.
